Word 2004 bug: hyphens that don't break

[Matthew Stevens]

In some documents, a normal hyphen will not break at the end of a line -
instead, the whole compound moves to the next line. I have even tried
replacing the hyphen by pressing the hyphen key, just in case there was
a non-breaking hyphen there, but this doesn't make a difference.

In other documents the hyphens break normally. I cannot see a pattern to
this.

Any ideas?

 

[A. Sparling]

Wor

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

That's "likely" to be a bad font problem. Unicode has two hyphen
characters: the "breaking hyphen" (the normal one, character number U+00AD)
and the "non-breaking" hyphen, Unicode U+2011.

If your font is using the wrong symbol (or your keyboard has somehow mapped
the hyphen to U+2011) then Word won't break at hyphens...

You haven't been playing around with your Customise Keyboard or Keyboard
mapping files, have you?

Cheers

I have this problem too. Word will not break any of my words with
hyphens in them. This happens in all documents, so far as I can see:
new ones and old ones created with Word 5.1A.

I am running Word 2004 11.2 (050714), under OS X 10.4.6. I am using the
US extended keyboard. As a workaround I insert a zero-width breaking
character after hyphens. It's not pretty, but it works.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[A. Sparling]

I haven't mucked about with anything, save that I do have som
customized keyboard shortcuts assigned in Word, and I do have som
customized autocorrect shortcuts. All of that has been done insid
Word. And the problem does seem to be restricted to Word--at least
Melel doesn't have any difficulties breaking hyphens at ends of lines

 

[Elliott Roper]

I haven't mucked about with anything, save that I do have some
customized

keyboard shortcuts assigned in Word, and I do have some customized
autocorrect shortcuts. All of that has been done inside Word. And the problem
does seem to be restricted to Word--at least, Melel doesn't have any
difficulties breaking hyphens at ends of lines.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

You might have a look at the Word language and Mac keyboard language
settings on your machine. The bizarre format of your news posting from
your 'vBulletin USENET gateway' makes me suspect that not all is well.
(I see little forward delete symbols where I'd expect line ends in your
post. Not everyone will see it that way. It looks fine in Google
Groups.)

 

[A. Sparling]

----------------------------------------------------------------------

You might have a look at the Word language and Mac keyboard language
settings on your machine. The bizarre format of your news postin from
your 'vBulletin USENET gateway' makes me suspect that not all i well.
(I see little forward delete symbols where I'd expect line ends i your
post. Not everyone will see it that way. It looks fine in Google
Groups.)

**********************************************************
A. Sparling replies:

Dunno where you got the funny colors from. I just typed my reply int
the box on macosx.com in Safari.

Keyboard is US extended; Word language setting is English US. But i
doesn't change if I assign a different language, either

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Send me a sample of one of those documents. I need to see what character
codes are actually landing in the text. I had a similar problem myself,
without any non-English languages or fonts involved, so I am chasing this
one.

Put the password "90@p10g2000cwp" in the subject line or you'll get dumped
by my firewall, and attach the sample as a Word .doc.

Cheers

----------------------------------------------------------------------


**********************************************************
A. Sparling replies:

Dunno where you got the funny colors from. I just typed my reply into
the box on macosx.com in Safari.

Keyboard is US extended; Word language setting is English US. But it
doesn't change if I assign a different language, either.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

That one turned out to be a corrupt document, produced by a corrupt Normal
template, possibly created by up-converting a heavily-customised Normal
template from Mac Word 5.1.

More in the "File Conversions: A Heads-Up" thread...

Send me a sample of one of those documents. I need to see what character
codes are actually landing in the text. I had a similar problem myself,
without any non-English languages or fonts involved, so I am chasing this
one.

Put the password "90@p10g2000cwp" in the subject line or you'll get dumped
by my firewall, and attach the sample as a Word .doc.

Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410